Easter melee: 200 involved in fight at Good Time Emporium

Tuesday

Mar 25, 2008 at 12:01 AMMar 25, 2008 at 7:30 PM

On Easter Sunday around 8 p.m., a melee broke out at Good Time Emporium. It appears a fight started in the area of the arcades and moved toward the birthday party area, where, according to Officer Slattery, there were lots of families around. Eventually, it was chaos as State Police, Tufts police and Somerville Housing Authority cops were called in for backup.

“I observed a crowd of about 150 to 200 people in the birthday party area with tables and chairs being thrown in every direction,” wrote officer Jim McNally in his report, and that was just the beginning of it.

On Easter Sunday around 8 p.m., a melee broke out at Good Time Emporium.

It appears a fight started in the area of the arcades and moved toward the birthday party area, where, according to Officer Slattery, there were lots of families around.
Eventually, it was chaos as State Police, Tufts police and Somerville Housing Authority cops were called in for backup.

“Several fights were breaking out,” said Stattery. “There were now two to three hundred people in the immediate area. Tables were being knocked over, chairs were being tossed and people were running across tables to get at one another. As we would break up one fight another one would start. One of the staff members pulled an aluminum baseball bat out of someone's hand who had climbed on top of a table.”

In the middle of the fracas, a distraught woman ran up to McNally and said she had just been threatened with a knife. She pointed at a woman and said, "That's her. She's the one that threatened me with it,” according to McNally’s report. When the woman in question, Regina M. Hunter saw McNally looking for her, she tried to take off, but was stopped by a state trooper and a Good Time employee. Eventually it took a housing authority cop and McNally to subdue Hunter, who was trying to get away by climbing the back of the chair and trying to get on top of the table, McNally’s report states. She was eventually cuffed and hauled off to a police wagon while a crowd of about 75 outside taunted police.

“The officers had to resort to swinging our expandable batons around to keep the crowd from physically coming at us,” McNally wrote.

Reade S. Armstrong, 18, of Roslindale and Kwmaine T. Davis of Dorchester were both arrested on charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. Regina M. Hunter, 17, of Randolph was reportedly found with a black folding pocket knife with at least a 6 inch blade, and was arrested for possession of a dangerous weapon, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.